Chitral — Garam Chashma Development Organization (GADO), a local support organization sponsored by AKRSP held its Annual General Meeting (AGM) here today. Since its inception in 1998 and registration in 2007 it has held only one proper AGM in 2010, while others were either skipped or held at cluster level separately in violation of its own by-laws as it suited nomination of cohorts as directors of the LSO.

The AGM of today lacked proper representation of village and women organizations, who are genuine members of AGM and instead irrelevant political figures were invited, prompting the members of Shoghor UC led by veteran social activist, Amir Hazar to walk out from the meeting in protest. The outsider political figures had probably been invited to pre-empt criticism of the present self-appointed LSO leadership and abort real issues. Local stakeholders have now demanded reimbursement of their registration fee and share in the Endowment Fund of GADO. They have already formed their own LSO by the name of Pamir Area Integrated Development Organization (PAIDO) after having failed to force legal compliance and transparency in GADO.

Interestingly the circular for the meeting contained no agenda which was the legal requirement. The standard AGM would discuss audit report, annual progress report and elect new BOD, as the tenure of the present AGM expired two months ago. The circular did not mention appointment of Manager, which remains vacant for the past three years and a defunct project employee has been made to officiate as Manager because it suits the BOD agenda.

The composition of the present AGM has removed all the pretention of impartiality and firmly puts it in political arena. Ironically it all happened just in front of AKRSP representatives who did exhort the AGM to take legally correct decisions but the advices were contemptuously ignored and AKRSP representatives had to cut sorry figure. Hopefully their eyes would now open up and compel AKRSP to become proactive and intrusive to force legal correction in its LSO. Enough is enough. AKRSP should not allow few unscrupulous elements to take it for a ride. It must aggressively guard its image and that of His Highness by reigning in the runaway LSO. The Company law provides for the appointment of Administrator to clean up the LSO by making recoveries and then call AGM to elect directors and hand over power to them. It is time that this option may be taken up for consideration to salvage whatever is left of GADO and restore the rightful image of AKRSP. It is not fair on part of AKRSP to shift responsibility or blame on to DCCN which is toothless and largely dysfunctional-more part of the problem than solution. — Islamuddin, 03 Oct 2016